Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • Now the recovery starts. Living with Ehlers Danlos

    Dislocated left collar bone - photo taken in mirror
    Dislocated Collarbone

    I walked all over Melbourne last week, with my teeth gritted as my shoulder and ribs dislocated, trying to ignore what my lower body was screaming at me. I am pretty sure it involved expletives. It does appear however, that if you need to do something badly enough, you can force your body to do it.

    Unfortunately, three days of late nights, early mornings, lots of walking, laughing and sitting – it all takes a toll. I am pretty sure I wasn’t making any sense when people spoke to me on Sunday night, waiting to fly back into Hobart.

    The crash after forcing my body to keep up with my mind is usually swift and brain numbingly dull. I stop being able to walk any more than the bare minimum and my stamina for doing anything drops to basically nil. I spend a lot of time laying down with a book and a child snuggled under my arm.

    Bendy joints don’t actually take too well to being overused and this time, I forced myself so far that I’m exhausted even writing this post (even though I want to) and everything has been a little neglected.

    Case in point: I had to remove the hoses from the back of the washing machine today, to get rid of a blockage of sticks and leaves in the cold water intake. Half way through removing the first hose, I was curled up foetal on top of the washing machine. Nathan removed the second pipe, while I flushed the first one with a spray bottle. Getting them back on again left me  exhausted. To be clear, I am talking WASHING MACHINE HOSES. Not running a marathon.

    Once I’d finished, I sat down on the bed to eat with the children, and woke up two hours later, with my pillow imprinted on my face and both wrists dislocated from where I had tucked them in to my front and then rolled on them.

    Yay me.

    Being chronically unwell manifests in a variety of ways. My relationship with food has changed and as much I adore food, I now choose food that I know won’t make me throw up. Nothing overly spiced, light, clear soups, mild flavours. All very boring in the scheme of things, but more fun than vomiting in public.

    I think eating whatever I want from a restaurant menu is one of the things I miss the most. That said, I am becoming very acquainted with what a good consomme should have and the one I ordered at Movida Next Door while I was in Melbourne was absolutely divine.

    I can tell that it is going to take me a few weeks to recover from the hell I put myself through in Melbourne and if I appear to be suffering from narcolepsy, or if I’m not about on twitter, you know why. There are only so many blocks you can walk and joints you can dislocate before everything rebels and the choice of coping or not coping is taken away from you.

    Boo, hiss.

  • Nuffnang Blogopolis, the good and the bad #nnb2011

    I attended Nuffnang’s Blogopolis this weekend and I have come home with some thoughts that need working out in my mind, so LUCKY YOU, you get to read all about it.

    The bad:

    • There was no Welcome to Country. It doesn’t take a lot of time or effort to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land and I was a little stunned to realise it had been left out. I tweeted it and got a few retweets, so I wasn’t the only one who thought it was poor form to have been forgotten.
    • I knew a lot of the content being covered and while there were great points spoken about, I struggled to keep my attention on all of the panelists, all of the time. I found myself straining to hear some speakers, especially towards the end and I’m not certain if that was an audio issue on the conference’s part, or a brain shut down on mine.
    • It got really hot and airless at the front of the room and I had a hard time with that. I didn’t go back to my table after lunch, instead electing to sit up the back with my notepad and listen from there. The chairs were more comfortable there as well and I was able to sit more easily.
    • My painkillers kicked in a bit before lunchtime and I spun out. With the heat from the room and the headspin, I worried I was going to pass out or vomit. I didn’t do either of these things (bonus!), but I also think that my tweets probably stopped making sense.
    • Working with Brands, the session, made me incredibly grumpy. I’m not entirely sure what they thought they would achieve by telling bloggers to basically suck it up, be happy they were working with a brand and bend over backwards (or forwards) and do whatever it took to keep the client happy, but I know damn well that if I had to jump through the hoops that the Agency was talking about, I wouldn’t feel nearly as well disposed towards the brand at the end of it. I finished that session with a whole bunch of notes to take back to my sponsors on things NOT to do. So maybe it was worthwhile for that.
    • There was a lot of anti-Blogger sentiment expressed by speakers. I love wordpress and I want everyone to convert to it, but it was overt enough to even make me cringe. You don’t gain anything by putting 50% of the audience off-side at the beginning by implying that the platform they use is lesser. Being on Blogger doesn’t mean that a blogger is of less quality than their peers who are using self-hosted wordpress. It just means that the blogger has different priorities. And that is okay.

    Logistical issues:

    • The line for tea and coffee at morning tea was ridiculous and I don’t think the line was even half way through when the break finished. I desperately wanted a cup of tea, but took one look at the line and didn’t bother. I eventually got a cup of tea in the afternoon during the panels and I’m glad I did, the tea was excellent.
    • Also, and this is sort of petty, but the cupcakes were ridiculously dry. The icing was nice however.
    • The allocated seating worked well, for me, but only because I lucked out and had a decent table. I didn’t hear the same thing from everyone and so for some people, the allocated seating didn’t work. I think a better way to do it may have been allocated seating until lunch and then allowing people to move.

    The Good:

    • Michael Aulia of Craving Tech made me pick up my pen and take notes of what he was saying. His suggestions for speeding up a website were exactly what I needed to be hearing and so I thank him for that. I’m researching and implementing some new plugins as I type.
    • Darren Rowse of Problogger is a fantastic public speaker and I took notes through his entire speech, just so that I could report back for a few people who weren’t there. I like that he is platform agnostic and his line about “a small group of raving fans being better” than a bunch of traffic who is a bit meh resonated with me. I think that what he had to say made a lot of sense to everyone, regardless of niche.
    • The day was run to a military tight schedule and we didn’t run overtime, or end up cutting anything short. I thought the organisation that Nuffnang had done was incredibly professional and they did a great job keeping everything on track.
    • It’s hard to run a conference when you have a range of bloggers attending. Different niches and people who have just started blogging, right up to people who have been doing this for years. Some things didn’t apply to me, but I think there was probably something for everyone in the program.
    • I got to hang out with my friends, and I met some fantastic new people, whose blogs I will be visiting and familiarising myself with over the next few weeks. For me, this is always the best bit of any blogging get together.

    Finally, I would like to thank Kellogg’s for sponsoring me to attend this weekend and especially Karina from DEC Communications who was instrumental in getting everything done. Also Louisa at Brand Meets Blog for introducing us!

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  • Frankly, I’m just really tired.

    I’m sure there are reasons why some planes leave some states at godawful o’clock. I’m sure these reasons are perfectly logical.

    What I am utterly failing to understand right now however, is why I personally decided to catch a plane at godawful o’clock today.

    I vaguely remember a 3am start and a drive to the airport and my eyes trying to close during landing in Melbourne because I was just that exhausted, but everything is a bit of a blur.

    I remember the bloggers brunch, a room full of women, equally loud and nervous in turn. Not enough space (is there ever enough space at events like that?) and a LOT of talking.

    I remember a late lunch with blogging friends and lots of laughter and lots of walking.

    The actual details are a little blurry though.

    Really Internet, this is just me letting you know that I am utterly exhausted, and nothing has gone wrong yet.

    Hell, I am even too tired to be stressing about the conference tomorrow.

    That has to be a good thing, right?

  • My brain is not a logical place to live inside

    My brain is not logical. Just because I can look at a situation and know that nothing terrible is going to go wrong (but how do you know?), doesn’t mean that I don’t start to panic, just a little, when plans change, or my expectation for events doesn’t work out quite how I’d imagined.

    I like to have things planned out inside my head before they happen. The unknown doesn’t sit well with me and I’m not the kind of person to decide to do something on a whim.

    All this is basically saying: I have pretty terrible anxiety and I probably should have gotten myself medicated two months ago, so that I could avoid the freakout that Blogopolis is causing me.

    Tomorrow, I leave home at some godawful hour of 4am, to go to the airport. Once I’m in Melbourne, I get to dump my bags, have breakfast and then make my way to the train station and the Bloggers Brunch. Lovely Norlin has offered to meet me at the train station and travel in with me, so that I’m not freaking out alone, because holy fuck, HOW DO YOU CATCH A TRAIN? WHAT DO I DO?

    Logically, I know it will be fine. Everything will go smoothly, I will panic on the inside and smile on the outside and I will try not to dislocate any major (or minor) joints in any fashion.

    Logic has nothing to do with panic attacks though and knowing that things will be fine does not stop my brain dragging me through all the worst case scenarios, just in case. Just in case of what? WHO KNOWS. Why do I have to have a plan in place in case I suddenly break an ankle? I DON’T KNOW. THIS MAKES NO SENSE TO ME EITHER.

    I’m pretty sure I’m going to run into Zombies. Or vampires. OR FAIRIES. MY BRAIN IS NOT BEING SENSIBLE.

    Saturday, I am also quietly freaking out about. I thought I was going to be fine and able to surround myself with people who know that I’m freaking out and are able to talk to me anyway, but no. Allocated seating.

    Again, logically, allocated seating is a great idea. We did it at AusBlogCon and it worked really well to get people meeting other people.

    So I GET where Nuffnang is coming from, with the allocated seating. But the fear of the unknown is killing me (WHO AM I SITTING WITH? WHY DOES THIS POST HAVE SO MUCH YELLING? I DON’T KNOOOOOW) and the worry of being stuck at a table in the very middle of a room with no way to leave if I need to throw up, well.

    If I get through this weekend without bleeding through my jeans (hello TMI), or throwing up on someone, or bursting into tears, I will count it a success.

    Actually fuck it. I don’t care if I cry.

    Just please, pray to whatever deity you care about and pray that I don’t bleed through anything or throw up. Or dislocate anything major.

    Holy fuck am I bendy right now.

    And panicking. I am panicking.

    BREATHE.

  • I am such a country girl

    It doesn’t take much to send me into paroxysms of delight nowadays. A rabbit, some fruit trees and some blue metal will just about do it.

    The mud has been steadily rising here, threatening to swallow my house whole. Fifteen ducks paddling in it have been making it worse and when an equal number of chooks stand around the front door yelling for food, while also scratching through the mud for interesting grubs, it can only end in disaster.

    I put my foot down when I started to feel like it might just be easier to mud ski around parts of my paddock and insisted that we order some blue metal (crushed rock) to cover the muddy areas with.

    It’s interesting to see who you know in our relatively small community and the woman on the other end of the phone when we ordered, was a girl that I had gone to school with. She arranged for everything to be dropped off that very same afternoon, while I imagined a future in which sliding through the mud wouldn’t exist. Blissful thoughts.

    Of course, like all things possibly related to Murphy, the truck arrived while I was in the middle of collecting eggs that hadn’t been collected while I was away. There I was standing in my daggiest clothes, with blackberry leaves caught in my hair, and my shirt pulled up to make a basket for the eight eggs I had just collected, three of them covered heavily in chook poo.

    Never let me tell you that my life is glamorous.

    Chook poo and a hoisted up shirt aside, Isaac and Amy were also outside with me.

    There is only so much consoling you can do when your shirt is full of eggs and shit and your toddler is trying to flail on the ground in duck poo and mud, while a truck roars and beeps in the background.

    On the upside, no one got squashed, we didn’t smash any eggs and duck poo washes off small boys quite easily. Thank god.

    Nathan spent the day shifting blue metal yesterday and I must say, I am not missing the mud slide. Not at all.

    ***

    Today of course, I was hunter gathering, as I’m wont to do. This is no ordinary hunter gathering mind you, this is bare hands and unsuitable shoes type hunter gathering.

    First, I picked out some new fruit trees, while holding fourteen kilos of toddler on my hip and smiling at the woman who was helping me. THEN, I insisted that Isaac hug his grandmother while I sorted out my gift certificate and Nathan bought new mattresses in the next door shop.

    And then I came home and caught a rabbit, with my bare hand. Only one hand, the other hand was full of an egg that my chooks had laid.

    Yes, you read that right, I caught a rabbit. WITH MY HAND.

    Behold! My awe inspiring rabbit catching abilities.

    Okay, so it was only a baby and it had run into an old cupboard and possibly all I did was flip the cupboard over onto its back so that the rabbit couldn’t jump out, but I CAUGHT IT.

    There is something to be said for being able to announce to the collective members of a room (front yard) “Hey, so I just caught a rabbit. BY MYSELF. Want to see?” and then actually produce a live rabbit for the gooing and the gaahing over.

    Hunter gathering went well today.

    Now if I can just find where my bloody poultry are hiding their nests, I’ll be lots happier.

    ***

    The bunny was so small that I couldn’t be bothered killing it. I don’t mind shooting, but there is just something so personal about breaking a neck, or chopping off a head, you know? Plus, with all the effort I went to to catch the little thing, it hardly seemed fair that then I would then be the one gutting and skinning it and getting all up and personal with its sneeze making fur.

    And I might have had a Watership Downs flashback and wondered who was waiting for the baby rabbit at home and not been able to stop myself personifying it.

    [Digression: The cat was waiting for the baby rabbit when I went back to let it go. He had been patiently sitting on the piece of tin I had blocked the opening with, waiting for his dinner to make its way out of the box. Now I know both why the cat is so fat and why there was a baby rabbit in the middle of my paddock in the first place. Curiosity satisfied.]